Danian said:
After reading through this raging debate, I see two primary camps: the "destroy-by-all-means" group and the "we-need-to-understand" group. Here are my thoughts:
Most military officers and government officials acknowledge that in order to win this war on terror, we must destroy the enemy in detail. Completely & totally. This would also include any and all potential terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. (Reason being that when you kill thousands of terrorists, another 2000 from the potential/sympathizer pool take their place and even more formally undecided people then join the ranks of the potential/sympathizer pool.) Someone was correct earlier when he said suggested that the culture in the Middle East feeds on any sign of weakness. That's the way it's been in that part of the world for thousands of years. Strength is power. Perhaps nuking Fallujah and Najaf would've demonstrated enough strength and power to the rank & file terrorist for them to capitulate. Of course, politically it would be unacceptable and the potential/sympathizer pools would probably swell, but probably not be willing to act in the face of the demonstrated power. But the feelings and ideas behind the insurgency would still be there, simmering underneath, and ultimately the war on terror will again reach a boiling point at some future time. We will not have won the war.
So how can we win? As I said alluded to earlier, the feelings and ideas held by the terrorists & their sympathizers are key. Military leaders know that to destroy the enemy (or destroy their will to fight), they need to understand the enemy. If they can undermine their will to fight, the war can be brought to a successful conclusion. It used to take superior firepower, but that's not the case here. For example, if the terrorists are driving their supporters through their devotion to their religion, then if we can convince those supporters that the terrorists are manipulating their religious beliefs to the point where they are being contrary, then the devoted will lose confidence in the terrorists. The lies must be exposed. We (the Coalition) cannot do this with any credibility, which is why we need Iraqi/Muslim allies. (This, by the way, is why I cringe every time our administration proclaims that "God is on our side." We simply give the terrorist leaders more to work with.) Parts of the Special Forces, diplomatic enoys, and non-government organizations continue to try to win the hearts & minds of the Iraqi people to achieve this goal. We must understand the enemy (their goals, their purpose, the way they operate, what motivates them, etc.) before we can create a plan & method to defeat them. We must also bring across the idea that we are no threat to them or their way of life and would rather not continue a protracted war.
However, this is not to say we should stop fighting. This would, of course, show the sign of weakness. We must continue to apply violence to the enemy. No way to sugar-coat it. That's what the military does: applies terrible, brutal violence. However, it needs to be carefully MEASURED and CONTROLLED violence. We need to let them know that we are willing and prepared to continue the war. Remember, total physical destruction of the enemy is not what we really want, but their loss of will to fight & total surrender. And in achieving their willing surrender and capitulation, we will have obtained our political and military objectives of destroying the enemy.
You make some interesting observations and I would like to reply to them.
You have moved the debate on - and quite frankly the fundamentalists here have proclaimed time and again that they're not interested in why 9/11 happened, they just want the people who organised to be wiped out.
Their solution has proven not to work.
Of course you are correct when you say terrorism is a state of mind.
It is a thought and/or feeling.
People aren't born as terrorists.
People become terrorists for a miriad of reasons.
Indoctrination from an early age, family history, an event that causes a person to become radicalised.
It is worth taking a look at other terrorist organisations to gain an insight as to why people carry out terrorist actions.
Take the IRA.
The most efficient paramilitary force on this planet effectively did not exist,
in it's present form, until 1969.
I mention 1969 for a specific reason.
In the 1960's, the issue of justice for ethnic groups was sweeping the world.
Civil riots for blacks in the USA, Bi-afra, civil rights in Northern Ireland and the Paris riots of 1968 and the ongoing Vietnam protests.
In Norther Ireland, Catholics wanted equal treatment to Protestants.
Housing, the non-gerrymandering of local politics, entry to third level education.
Rights that we take for granted today.
However, these rights were denied to the Catholic people of Northern Ireland.
When they demonstrated about these injustices - Unionist/Protestant forces shot and beat these peaceful protests.
When the Irish Tricolour was flown in a street in Northern Ireland - riots ensued because the Unionist/Protestant leaders did not want a foreign flag flying in "a Protestant State for a Protestant people".
The British army were deployed and they eventually started bearing down on the Catholics as well.
Young men were "interned" - thrown in to prison without charge.
Men were beaten and tortured by their local police force for demonstrating.
This pressure cooker situation gave young men a choice - either accept and cow down to the fact that all of the rights that they should have had, be denied to them, or they could radicalise and do something to strike back.
These conditions - rightly or wrongly - radicalised men to re-create the IRA.
Let's stop the film right here.
What radicalised people to join the IRA was the authorites response to peaceful protest.
Look at the words of the Brighton Bomber (Brighton bomb 1984 - the IRA nearly wiped out Margaret Thatchers entire goverment during their part conference), McGee.
McGee states "I was interned in the Maze prison for 18 months for taking part
in a demonstration. I was beaten by the authorities in that prison even though, I was in there without charge. On the day I was released I went back to my parents house and after saying hello to them, I went to the local
IRA commander and joined the IRA".
Pat McGee - bombed Brighton and almost assasinated Thatcher & Co.
He got life imprisonment.
While in prison he was contacted by a daughter of a minister who had been killed by his bomb.
They started to correspond.
Over the years, their correspondence became a dialogue.
McGee started to think about his actions and what he did (remember this man would be considered an icon by the IRA and the Devil incarnate by the
British).
On his release from prison, McGee met with the woman who's father he had killed (he was not allowed to meet her while in prison).
There followed a long process.
The woman wanted to know why McGee took her father away - he was trying to find out what motivated him to do what he did.
He started to feel remorse because he now experienced at first hand, the pain and loss of what happened to the people closest to the man who died.
But in this doing this, the daughter of the man who died, began to realise just
what caused McGee to do what he did, what had conditioned McGees thinking.
She began to realise that hundreds of young men like McGee, became radicalised because of injustice and unfairness.
And this microcosm of how people became readicalised needs to be applied to the terrorist threat in every situation.
Thousands of men across Northern Ireland were radicalised to join the IRA.
McGee's story is reflected in almost all cases.
Internment, beatings etc.
A whole generation of men - who should have gone on to get jobs or go to university - were instead radicalised to join a terrorist organisation.
Some of them were caught and imprisoned and went on hunger strike and starved themselves to death in 1981.
McGee said that it was the death of his commander Bobby Sands in 1981 after
66 days on hunger strike which made him decide to try to murder Margaret
Thatcher (she was PM when Sands died).
No one can justify the actions of a terrorist.
But we need to get to the root cause of what causes people to do what they do.
Then we need to remove those root causes.
People don't just plant a bomb in Brighton to kill a goverment - people don't just fly a plane in a building, for no reason.
No one could execute the actions at Brighton or at the WTC singlehandedly either.
People do these things because they're motivated to do so.
And the support network for these people is motivated to do so.
Terrorism is a state of mind.
The state of mind - the thought is what needs to be tackled.
Take away the reasons for that thought and you take away the terrorist as well.
I am not, nor have I ever been a member of the IRA - for clarification.